


Sonic Therapy

by luna65



Category: Greta Van Fleet (Band)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Gen, gratuitous musical discussion, they're all bros
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-14 02:12:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18043490
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luna65/pseuds/luna65
Summary: Music is always there for you, and if you're lucky...so is your band.





	Sonic Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, here I am with another character sketch - I've set this in 2015 (or at least that is when I mean it to happen, I might have flubbed it a bit with cultural references and the like). It's an example of the boys' dynamic when dealing with the typical teenage stuff. Enjoy! :)

**I: “What did you do?!”**

It was one of those times where no one was sure if it was raining or snowing. Treacherous slush made driving in Frankenmuth more than a bit dangerous and the night bitterly cold. Danny arrived in the basement of his bandmates, his wet shoes in hand and looking vaguely miserable.

“What?” Sam asked when Danny joined their grouping, sitting between Sam and Jake on the couch. Josh was folded up within an adjacent recliner.

“It’s over,” he replied, trying not to sound melodramatic, but Danny was clearly distressed. He ran a hand through his moisture-dappled dark hair.

“What did you do?!” Josh demanded, folding his arms and looking stern.

“Me?!”

“Let’s face it: your track record is not so good,” Jake noted.

“I don’t wanna talk about it!” Danny declared.

“Well you can’t sit here and pout all night, that’s for sure,” Sam said, reaching over and giving his best friend a gentle shove.

“Let’s crank some tunes,” Jake suggested, rising to his feet and moving over to the wall of vinyl across the room. “I think we should cover something from this one.”

He drew out an album featuring an infamous cover image: a figure shot below the waist in tight jeans, the zipper prominent and specifically tactile.

“No I can’t sing like Jagger,” Josh protested, “I don’t have the range.”

“You just do you, Joshie, and it will all work out.”

This was, in truth, the advice his brothers had been giving him - unsolicited or otherwise - all their lives.

“She said I was a jerk. I’m not a jerk!” Danny blurted out.

“Wait, what happened to _I don’t wanna talk about it_ ,” Jake asked.

“Well you’re not a jerk _all_ the time, anyway,” Sam commented.

Danny put Sam in a headlock for a moment. When he let go Sam was cackling at him.

“Shut up, Sammy!”

“Dude, look, if you don’t think you did anything wrong then what does it matter? It’s not like you’re gonna go to her house and beg her to take you back.”

“She wouldn’t let me come over. We had to break up over the phone.”

“Oh!” the Kiszkas all exclaimed.

“I know, right?! Like I’m a criminal or something?”

“Your mom never liked her, you know,” Josh observed. “Maybe that was it but she didn’t want to tell you that.”

“Mom **is** picky,” Danny replied.

“I mean, that’s a thing, right?” Sam said, nodding.

“So we’re talking about this now?” Jake demanded, rolling his eyes. “Because I think you just need some sonic therapy.”

“Can I have a pop?” Danny asked.

“You are in training, young man!” Sam teased, wagging his finger.

“Fuck - I just broke up with my girlfriend, I think I can have a Coke if I want to.”

“Oh there he goes, Mr. I Get Whatever I Want,” Josh gibed, and Danny flipped him off.

“Dude, just because I had an electric guitar before you guys did doesn’t make me spoiled, let it go already. I keep telling you - Josie’s the baby, she gets _everything_.”

Jake carried the album over to the stereo and soon the familiar opening chords of “Brown Sugar” sounded from the speakers. Danny stood up and looked around at the brothers who had taken him in even as they delighted in casting him in the role of over-privileged first-born son.

“Anybody else?”

They all raised their hands and made affirmative grunts.

 

**II: “two minutes and 43 seconds of pure nasty joy”**

The way in which they would figure out a song was to repeatedly listen to it, dissect it in minute detail, watch videos on YouTube if they could find them to mimic the motions of performance. But their favorite thing was to just marvel at these pieces of creativity: a song in all its’ enduring magic.

When “Wild Horses” began playing Danny let out a groan. “That’s a big-ass mood right there.”

“It’s so beautiful, it’s like how they say pedal steel just _cries_ in a song,” Sam commented.

“There’s so many _textures_ on these songs,” Josh said. “It’s wild, I mean, that was - what - 1971 or something? How did they even know how to do all those things?!”

Everyone nodded solemnly.

“And how are **we** gonna learn to do it?” Sam asked.

“We just will because we _want_ to,” Jake replied.

“Just like that,” Josh declared.

“We've learned _some_ stuff already,” Danny pointed out.

“Can’t You Hear Me Knocking” came on next and Jake jumped to his feet to play along on air guitar.

“This is the shit! This is two minutes and 43 seconds of pure nasty joy!”

“Yeah but the _song_ is seven minutes long,” Sam countered.

“Then it turns into something else, but listen - those guitars are playing against each other but they still make a whole sound. It’s so amazing.”

Danny began singing with the refrain and Sam put a hand over his mouth. Danny gripped Sam’s wrist and pushed his hand away.

“Oww! Damn dude, ever since you started the weights your hands are fuckin’ _lethal_.”

“I barely did anything to you, Twig Boy.”

“Oooh we should rename ourselves,” Josh declared with a manic grin. “You be Twig, I’ll be Flower, and Jakey can be Sapling.”

“Sapling? What the actual fuck, man.”

“It’s because you’re willowy,” Josh replied.

“Nah son, if anyone’s _willowy_ it’s this kid right here,” Sam asserted, pointing at himself.

“Don’t bring your height into this again,” Jake warned.

“Yeah you keep lording it **over** us,” Josh said, and waited for the punchline to hit. When it did, their laughter went on for several minutes and it felt good for all of them to laugh like that, to provide each other that kind of comfort, as deep as the music which nurtured them. A conversational silence set in as they focused their attention on _Sticky Fingers_ once more.

“I gotta bail,” Danny announced with a sigh in the middle of Side Two. “Mom is on my ass, like, what else is new.”

His bandmates seemed to know that was merely a convenient excuse given the tone of his voice, which was imbued with something beyond mere angst at the draconian regime Danny perceived he was living under. And they chose not to mock him for it. Picking up his shoes, he offered them a wave and a smirk in farewell, Sam following him upstairs.

“Don’t let the po-po getcha for being all hopped up on caffeine, Wagner.”

Danny pretended to land a punch and Sam mock-staggered as they made it to the mud porch.

“You okay?” Sam asked, watching Danny pull on his shoes.

“Yeah whatever. Later bro.”

“Later man.”

Sam felt a pang as he shut the door, sighing.

 

**III: “We know _less_ than nothing.”**

Sam had been watching from the living room window, and when he saw Danny get into his mom’s car, not starting it up right away, he knew he needed to offer something beyond the bro code of stoic support. He slipped into his Birkenstocks and shrugged on a jacket, bracing himself for the cold. The night was frigid but the sky was now clear, stars glittering as he looked upwards. He went over to the passengers’ side door and opened it. Danny wasn’t even on his phone, just sitting behind the wheel, motionless.

“Hey, I thought you were gonna be grounded.”

“Maybe. Probably. But I couldn’t -” His voice cut off abruptly.

Sam put a hand on his shoulder. “What did you do?”

“She said she didn’t know why we were going out if I never had any time for her. But at school we were, like, together most of the day.”

“C’mon dude, you can’t tell me that you don’t know what girls want. You have, like, _two_ sisters.”

Danny made a sound which might have been interpreted as laughter. “Would Ronnie even claim me, though?”

“Of course! Don’t be obtuse.”

“You can fuck off with that vocab eleven shit!” Danny replied with a smirk.

“Did you say you were sorry?”

“I felt like that’s all I **did** say. I just kept apologizing. But I mean, what am I gonna do? Quit something? I told her how hard it was to get into Jazz Band in the first place!”

“And we sure as hell wouldn’t let you quit even if you tried! But I guess you did all you could, man.”

“I guess I _was_ a jerk, but not, like, on purpose! I mean, I feel really bad and I guess that’s fair. It doesn’t _feel_ fair, though.”

“Yeah I know. You know we’re just givin’ you shit.”

“It’s gonna come around, I’ve got a dump truck full just waitin’ for _your_ ass.”

They laughed. But their shared demeanor turned introspective within seconds.

“It was brutal, man. Worse than when Mom yelled at me for flunking all those algebra quizzes.”

“Still?! I showed you how to do those problems!”

“I choked on the quiz, though. Totally sucks to be me right now, I guess.”

They looked through the windshield still speckled with slush.

“You can tell Lori it was my fault you got back late.”

Danny sighed. “That doesn’t work any more, bro. She says: ‘Daniel, you need to start taking responsibility for your own actions. You and Sammy don’t share a brain.’”

“Yeah we do!”

Danny laughed again, an actual laugh. “Yeah that’s what worries me because you’re the Devil!”

Sam grinned and gave Danny’s shoulder another squeeze.

“Dude, I have known you _practically_ all my life. And you’re okay.”

“Thanks buddy,” Danny said in a teasing tone.

“And we don’t know anything about anything. But we will someday.”

“We know _less_ than nothing.”

“Exactly!”

“Okay I’m going. You guys might have to practice without me tomorrow, though.”

“We’ll come over and beg for clemency.”

“Was there a _Law & Order_ marathon I missed or something?”

“There doesn’t even have to be, it seems like it’s all that’s on TV anymore!”

Within minutes Sam stood on the sidewalk and watched Danny drive down his street, waiting till he saw the car brake at the intersection then turn off towards home to go back inside. It wasn’t necessary to do so but Sam felt a measure of the same sadness and frustration his best friend was carrying and wanted to protect him from it, somehow.

And maybe that’s what it meant to be a family.


End file.
